


feels like roller coaster ride (you make me high)

by ranchboiii



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Jealous Shiro, M/M, Post S7, Sappy as hell, pining shiro, they kiss !
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-06 08:59:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15882825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ranchboiii/pseuds/ranchboiii
Summary: Keith is hot and everyone has noticed except Shiro. At least, until Matt brings it to his attention; then he can't stop noticing.





	feels like roller coaster ride (you make me high)

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place post s7. i was trying to do an exercise to see if i could write something short under 2.5k while also writing about shiro getting upset that keith is hot and everyone has noticed except him ! what a fool !! 
> 
> Loosely based on a tweet I saw??? if i find it i will absolutely link it. big thank you to sk fandom for all your amazing creative energy y'all are amazing. ok thank you !!!
> 
> anyway! I hope you enjoy this very silly short fic !!
> 
>  
> 
> title from the hyukoh song of the same name !

Somewhere around their third week of being back on Earth, it hits Shiro like a storm of peak-velocity bricks. 

Thanks to Voltron, Atlas, and whatever lucky curveball fate thought to throw, humanity can at last catch a break from their prolonged capture. While their liberation from Sendak’s troops is bittersweet, there’s meaning in the fact that everyone can pull together, grieve together, and rebuild together.

That’s when it starts. Sick of pushing papers on Atlas, Shiro gets assigned to assist with rubble reduction near Sector 5. Matt waves him over to a transport vehicle for the two of them, tearing out of the parking lot like a bird in flight and much like he used to do on their joyrides during their Garrison days.

“I’ve hardly had the chance to catch up with you,” Matt tells him, rolling down the windows and letting the cross-breeze whip his long hair around. “How’ve you been?”

“Great,” Shiro says. “Well, as great as anyone can be after everything but,” he shifts his gaze to his floating hand. “I don’t know. Honestly I sort of got new lease on life.”

Matt fixes him with a kind, fond smile. “I’m so glad to hear that,” and he looks truly glad. Then Matt knocks over the first domino. “How’s Keith?”

“Keith?” Shiro says softly. “Good, I think. Why do you ask?”

“Well, it’s been a while since I’ve seen either of you and just wanted to check in on, _you know_. Your relationship status,” Matt shrugs, waggling his eyebrows.

“Relationship status—Matt, what are you talking about?”

“Wait, are you serious?” Matt’s tone changes now that he can tell Shiro isn’t clocking him. “C’mon Shiro, you and Keith? _Really?_ ”

“What about us?” Shiro is starting to get a little worried about implications now.

“Sorry,” Matt corrects. “You two are just—I mean, you’ve always been close. So I just thought… And he’s like, a lot bigger now? When did that happen?”

“Long story,” Shiro says, carefully digesting Matt’s incoherent words. “Matt, are you asking if Keith and I are—”

“Listen Shiro, if you have to ask then we’re not gonna talk about it, I’m sorry for bringing it up. I just noticed that he got super hot, that everybody else noticed that he did, and I was wondering if you’d noticed, too,” Matt says in a that’s-the-end-of-the-conversation-thanks kind of way. They allow a silence to fill the car while Shiro takes to heart what Matt has brought to the table.

Keith getting “super hot” is not how Shiro would have phrased it; more like the two years he passed with his mother had allowed him to grow into himself, and that self was unmistakably different, confident, handsome. It was broader shoulders and more self-assuredness, and Shiro admired the hard work Keith had done to get to where he was: he was the focused, skilled leader that Voltron deserved. But what with saving Earth and restoring peace to the balance of space-time, Shiro hasn’t noticed whether or not anyone else has noticed Keith’s transformation.

But now that Matt had brought it up, he would.

*

When they arrive at Sector 5, Hunk, Pidge, and Keith are already there, mingling with the volunteers and helping with the clean-up. Shiro watches Keith deftly delegate tasks to small teams of people, signalling Pidge to mark a tablet with updates accordingly. From where he’s standing, Shiro thinks of Matt’s words and starts to see things in a new light; for example, the way Keith’s back muscles flex under his thin t-shirt, the way his work pants hang off of his hips.

“You are unbelievable,” Matt scoffs, giving him a dirty look.

“What?” Shiro asks, shoulders hiking up with the accusation and shame of getting caught. Without elaboration, Matt storms over to his sister and makes himself useful. As soon as Pidge greets Matt, Keith turns around and looks for Shiro, knowing he’ll be there, smiling when he finds him. His face like a mirror to Keith’s, Shiro strides over and asks how he can help.

“Glad you could make it. You can work with me,” Keith offers, with tired eyes and a warm smile. “I need to take a quick water break anyhow. Can you cover with supervising for a hot minute, captain?”

“Absolutely, team leader,” Shiro replies, watching Keith leave.

“You have pet names for each other, too? Ridiculous,” Matt hisses.

“They’re our titles!” Shiro tries to defend.

True to his word, Keith returns after a minute but is stopped by one of the MFE pilots, Griffin. If Shiro’s memory serves, he remembers that while Griffin is a skilled and talented pilot now, he had given Keith a lot of grief in his early Garrison days. Shiro always joked that he’d probably had a crush on Keith.

Like a cursed prophet, Shiro discovers what is own foot tastes like.

With a few large gestures, it’s clear that Griffin is talking to Keith about the supply trucks. He flips his hair, his posture easy, relaxed. But with the tilt of his hips and crook of his neck, it turns unmistakably flirty, and an uneasy, foreign feeling seeps into Shiro’s stomach. He tries to quell it by keeping busy but he can’t seem to tear his eyes away from the two of them, wondering what is going through Keith’s head.

“You okay there, Shiro?” Matt asks with a sly and pointed grin.

“Fine,” and Shiro realizes his teeth are gritted as Griffin takes a step forward, close enough that it looks like their chests are touching from this angle. Why are they standing so close? Is that even necessary? “Keith!” Shiro yells without thinking. He’s been hit by a train of implications. Keith looks past Griffin and the irritated expression falls from his face, softening when he sees it’s Shiro calling for him. “C-could you help me out with this over here?”

Keith pushes past Griffin and Shiro scrambles to find something he needs help with, all while under Matt’s watchful eye.

“Kind of pathetic,” Matt says. “Don’t you think?”

“Griffin was bothering him,” Shiro shrugs, trying very, very hard not to pout.

“Whatever you wanna tell yourself,” Matt sighs, wingman-ing Shiro anyway by telling Keith how Shiro just cannot seem to open the cargo crates no matter what so please assist this big, helpless oaf.

“It’s okay, Shiro,” Keith says, placing an understanding palm on Shiro’s arm. “I had trouble opening them at first, too.”

Shiro swallows around the knot in his throat.

*

The next day, something similar happens. 

Shiro walks into the cafeteria with some of the Atlas staff, eager for a well-deserved break. Almost immediately, Shiro picks Keith out of the crowd. He’s sitting at the end of a long table, just him and his mom. Despite all the interactions civilians have had with the paladins of Voltron, Keith still is the least approachable. Or maybe it’s just Krolia. But Shiro loves her, intimidating stature, nurture, nature, and all.

Tray in hand, he breaks from the Atlas staff and takes a seat across from Keith.

“Hey,” he greets.

“Hey,” Keith responds, eyeing him. “That suit fits you really well, you know.”

Shiro gives his Atlas armor a quick glance before biting into his sandwich. “Thank you,” he says. “I’ve lost a little muscle, so I’ve actually been kind of self-conscious about it.”

“No you haven’t,” Keith says quickly as though he’s been burned by Shiro’s words. Then his face goes scarlet as he amends his statement. “I mean, it’s not that noticeable if you have.” In his scramble, Keith accidentally launches his fork over his shoulder when he tries to pick it up and Shiro stops chewing to try and process exactly what’s going on. He looks to Krolia for her input but she’s standing up and running off, swearing that she was late and can hear Kolivan tapping his foot waiting for her.

Keith is having a lot of trouble picking up his fork until Acxa appears to his right, holding a new fork and offering it to Keith.

“I saw that you dropped yours,” she explains. “You good?” Keith nods and she joins them at the table, taking a seat next to him. Acxa has really grown on Shiro since she’d saved them, and there had been multiple occasions that Shiro wanted to thank her but didn’t quite know how. On one hand, he wasn’t sure if all the past stuff had been cancelled out yet. He wasn’t exactly the type to keep track.

“Thank you,” Keith says quietly, his blush fading, eyes briefly flickering towards Shiro. “I’m good. How’s combat training with the cadets?”

“Good,” Acxa says. “They’re good listeners, but struggling with the execution. Not as fast as us, either,” she adds, gesturing between her and Keith, indicating that it was a mixed-Galra thing.

“I’m sure they’ll be getting it in no time,” Keith says. “You’re a great teacher.”

Acxa’s lips twitch and the sticky malaise comes back to Shiro. Like some sort of flirting-clairvoyant curse, he watches Acxa drag her attention from Keith’s face to her tray, searching for something to say.

Shiro is shocked by what she comes up with.

“Keith, please try this,” she says, spearing an innocent green bean with wartime-general precision and force. “You’ve tried fried umyam, right? I swear it tastes just like this.”

“A green bean?” Keith asks, aloof as ever. “I guess I’d never thought about it.”

“Here,” Acxa presses, holding the fork closer. Shiro can’t really believe what he’s seeing.

His heart floats when Keith reaches for the fork to take it, then drops like a rock when Acxa pulls the fork back, nonverbally insisting that she feed it to him. Against all odds, Keith’s face goes pink again and he glances uncertainly at Shiro while he takes the bite.

“See?” Acxa asks. “Doesn’t it taste just like it?”

“I guess,” Keith mumbles, appearing sweaty. “I have to go. Back to see Kolivan. Thanks for the fork. Bye.” 

Keith is gone before he’s done chewing, and while Shiro wants to chase him down, he instead tries to make peace with the fact that maybe people really are into Keith. He also needs to deconstruct the fact that he’s viewing the others as competition; Keith is not a trophy to be won.

As valiant as the thought is, he and Acxa eat in total silence.

*

“Did you see the way she was checking him out when he was bent over the pod engine?” Lance snickers from the chaise longue of the break room. The paladins of Voltron are having one of their “exclusive club meetings” as Matt refers to them, and “mandatory group bonding sessions” as Sam calls them. All that time in space couldn’t split them apart if a black hole came between them, and Sam claims it’s important they continue to foster that in small ways instead of simply carrying on with life like it never happened.

Shiro thinks most of their meetings are enjoyable. Today is not one of those meetings.

“No, but it was so funny. It was like this fervent admiration,” Lance continues, much to the chagrin of Hunk, Pidge, and Keith. “Until I was like, ‘wow Rizavi, I’ve never seen you look at a man that way before,’ and Rizavi was like, _‘A man!?’_!” Lance curls in on himself with a howl of laughter. 

“Stop telling this story,” Keith growls.

“Keith, you should be flattered. You have a superpower. A butt like that is utterly… pacifying. You could forge alliances. Even Lotor made comments on it, too, remember?”

Shiro tries to tune out the story to no avail, chewing on his disdain for Matt ever bringing this up in the first place. When did everyone get it in for Keith? And why did he feel like he was falling behind? 

His frustration is magnified when Allura butts in.

“Well Keith, you can’t just sit on a comment like that. Stand up and show us what you’ve got.”

Allura’s new and relaxed attitude since coming to Earth has been an asset to the whole team, but now Shiro thinks she’s been spending too much time with Lance. Keith makes no move to get up, but somehow Pidge gets roped into it and pushes him off the couch with a giggle.

“Alright, fine,” Keith says, and Shiro holds his breath. “Ta-da.” Keith turns around in a very clinical, anticlimactic way, but Shiro’s heart skips a beat nonetheless.

“I suppose it is rather non-gender conforming,” Allura notes.

“Yeah, there is a nice unisex quality to it,” Hunk agrees, tilting his head for a better angle.

“Shiro?” Lance pries, and Shiro watches Lance’s life flash before his eyes. “Any thoughts?” 

That’s when Keith looks at Shiro over his shoulder expectantly, with his big eyes and soft-looking hair. It’s a coy, coquettish pose that Shiro has recently imagined many times before. It’s too much.

“It’s too much,” Shiro vocalizes, completely on accident. 

“Too much?” Keith intones, his shoulders dropping.

“Too much?!” Lance practically shouts. “What the hell are you talking about? It’s perfect!”

“Lance, calm down,” Pidge says, reading the room and trying to do damage control. “I don’t think Shiro was talking about—”

In a desperate panic, Shiro makes a beeline for the door and leaves. It might set a terrible precedent since no one has ever left one of their sessions early, but he doesn’t care. There is too much on his mind and sharing a room with Keith and his alliance-forging butt won’t help.

Down the hallway, he finds a bench he can call refuge.

*

Shortly after, Keith follows him out.

“You okay?” he asks, taking a seat and disarming Shiro completely.

“Keith,” Shiro gasps, standing bolt upright. “Keith, I’m so sorry about what I said, I didn’t—I wasn’t thinking. It wasn’t what I meant at all,” he exhales, his shoulders drawing down sheepishly.

“It’s okay, Shiro,” Keith presses. “I know you didn’t.”

“You do?”

Keith nods his head, looking back down at his feet. “I’ve been wondering when was a good time to bring this up, but you’ve forced me to play my hand.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“What I said during our fight,” Keith starts, meeting Shiro’s eyes again. “On the moon. I meant it.”

Shiro stills. They still haven’t really spoken about it; there hasn’t been a right place or a right time for it. But now Keith is sitting before him on his perfect butt and opening it up for discussion. _The topic_ , Shiro mentally corrects. Opening up _the topic_ for discussion.

“I love you,” Keith says, everything about his posture set in rote, genuine determination. “And I want you to, uhm.”

Shiro’s body trembles with the suggestion. “To what?”

Keith joins him in standing, steps close enough that their chests would touch if Shiro were to simply lean in.

“This,” Keith breathes, pressing his lips to Shiro’s so lightly that Shiro’s not even sure if it’s happening. To remedy that, he presses back with a little more force. Keith answers by surging forward so powerfully that he’s got Shiro up against the wall of the hallway, against his body, kissing him hard, fast, wet.

“Keith,” Shiro sighs into him, instinctively rolling his hips. “I love you.” It falls from his lips more easily than any other words. 

“I love you,” Keith growls, kissing him again with a hungry edge to it, which Shiro loves. He can’t believe how lucky he is to have Keith in his arms.

Coyly, Keith trains Shiro’s hands on his backside, guiding them to open up and grasp.

“Too much?” Keith asks.

Shiro laughs into his neck.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter !](https://twitter.com/ranchboiii)


End file.
